People are social creatures. By working together, a group of people create value that is greater than the sum of the individuals within the group. The concept of social networking has been around, and has recently been adapted to the Internet (the World Wide Web). New Web applications offer an ever increasing number of functionalities to Internet users, and are changing Internet social networking from top-down to bottom-up creation of information and interaction. Nowadays, individual users create content that everyone can share, while in the past there were only a few large media corporations creating content on the Internet for the users to access. The prevalence and popularity of online social networks have transformed the Internet; it is becoming another dimension of the society, where people connect, interact, follow up and continue to build relationships.
Chat system technology, commonly referred to as online chat, allows users to communicate in near-real time over a network, such as the Internet or an intranet. The most common forms of online chat are direct, one-to-one chat, commonly referred to as instant messaging (or “IM”). Advances in mobile communication technologies, for example, in smart phones and other portable computing devices, have made it possible for users to communicate from virtually anywhere around the world.
Social networks and instant messaging platforms have also become a competitive market where a customer and a merchant or service provider do business, for example, as an online buyer and an online seller, respectively. Due to the high mobility of both the online buyer and seller populations, however, there is a need to provide one or both parties with a stable and intuitive interface for facilitating interactions and transactions. There is also a need for additional and enhanced capabilities of processing information communicated among multiple users including online buyers and sellers.